Shining a Spotlight 2.22.07: Wrestling on Film

Also, another sad farewell to Mike Awesome. While he was good as ECW’s champion monster, it’s sad that he’s better remembered for how WCW dropped the ball by making him “That ‘70’s Mike Awesome,” killing his drive. I know he had his problems but still sad to see him go out like this. At least he made his last match, at the first One Night Stand, a memorable one to go out on.

I love Oscar season. I’m a movie nut so it’s only natural. Just the spectacle and the big show itself always draws me in even in years when the picks can be off and the show may drag. It got me to thinking on how the movies have presented professional wrestling, a list that is shorter than you’d think but have done interesting angles on the business.

The problem is that the mainstream doesn’t quite look at the business or its fans in the most positive light. It took a long while for books on wrestling to come out because a lot of publishers honestly seemed to think fans couldn’t read. There’s still the mentality that you have to be less than smart to like wrestling, which has never made sense to me. If otherwise intelligent people can get sucked into reality TV or make a movie with Eddie Murphy in a fat suit a box office hit, they can like wrestling too.

The first major movie to tackle the business was 1974’s aptly named The Wrestler Verne Gagne’s AWA was doing excellent business at the time and Gagne decided he wanted to do a movie to bring wrestling to the masses. Finding a few contacts in Hollywood, he brought the tale to the big screen, a mix of the real faces of the AWA along with some actors like Ed Asner.

Naturally, Gagne, a true believer in kayfabe, presented it that wrestling was completely for real. The plot, for what it is, has Asner as an aging, old-time promoter not that different from Verne. He finds himself facing a corrupt mob-allied guy trying to get some wrestlers to fix a fight. Yeah, I’m pretty sure the irony went over the heads of viewers back then.

The plot is mostly secondary to the wrestlers, many of them AWA guys playing themselves: Dusty Rhodes, Dick Murdoch, Superstar Billy Graham, Billy Robinson and others. Interestingly, Verne played a wrestler named Mike Bullard, an aging champion who Robinson challenges to a match. There are also cameos by the like of Oddjob from Goldfinger and even Vince McMahon Sr. There’s some goofy moments like Dusty and Murdoch tearing up a bar of guys and Verne doing straight-faced talk on how real wrestling is while we see guys training. While the film wasn’t a huge success, it did help present the business in a positive light as in the end, of course, Bullard wins his last match and Asner beats the evil crooked promoters and everyone’s happy. The movie is mostly out of print but you might track it in the cheap bins at DVD stores.

Another film to show wrestling, albeit briefly, was Rocky III. It takes place early in the movie as Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, having made 10 successful title defenses, takes on the heavyweight wrestling champion in a charity match. The scene was obviously inspired by the infamously horrible Muhammad Ali/Antonio Inoki “match” where Inoki basically lay on the mat kicking at Ali. The champ, Thunderlips, was of course played by a then raw Hulk Hogan, who basically turned his usual ring persona up a few notches. There’s some fun bits like when Rocky wonders how much Thunderlips eats and trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) mutters “About 250 pounds.” Naturally, the ring announcer immediately says that’s Rocky’s weight. At first, Rocky treats it like a joke but Thunderlips seems dead serious, throwing him around and at one point, hefting Rocky up and into the crowd. After Thunderlips shoves down a few cops, Rocky takes off his gloves to beat him back. Thunderlips then breaks his character to shake Rocky’s hand, explaining he was just giving the fans a good show and poses for photographs with the champ and his family. While funny, the scene was also important to the movie as it shows how, as a fighter, Rocky has become a shadow of himself. Of course, the bigger effect would be for Hogan. The movie was a smash hit and Hogan’s role was lauded as a highlight, thus setting Hogan off on his path to wrestling stardom.

In 1987, one of the more infamous wrestling movies occurred, Body Slam. Dirk Benedict, fresh off The A-Team plays a down-on-his-luck agent who “would sell his mother for a dollar, fifty cents after negotiations.” Through circumstances too complex to go into, he ends up as the manager of a tag team, Quick Rick (Roddy Piper) and Tonga Tom (Tonga Kid). This angers the duo’s former manager, Capt. Lou Morano (Capt. Lou Albano) who manages to get them blackballed from all legitimate arenas. Benedict comes up with the idea of combining Rick and Tom with a really bad ‘80’s band for a rock-n-wrestling show that will bring in the bucks. This leads to the highlight of the film, them arguing with Morano on “the highest rated show on television,” a wrestling talk show hosted by…wait for it…Charles Nelson Reilly.

Of course, this leads to a big match up where Rick and Tom win, Morano is forced out and we get a fun series of brief cameos by Ric Flair, Bruno Sammartino and Freddie Blassie. The movie vanished from theaters in no time flat but Piper did get some exposure as he basically played himself, wild and whacky and led to several roles in Hollywood afterward.

Of course, no list of wrestling movies can be complete without mentioning No Holds Barred. Made at the very height of Hulk Hogan’s popularity in 1989, it was intended to be his big starring role that would make him a Hollywood heavyweight. Vince McMahon helped create the story…and boy, does it show. Hogan basically plays himself, Rip, a highly popular wrestler whose show is the biggest ratings draw in television. He has along his brother Randy (Mark Pellegrino) and his aged black trainer Charlie (Bill Henderson). However, the evil money-grubbing executive of a rival network, Brell (played by Kurt Fuller, the master of the slimy self-centered sleazeball) is jealous and wants Rip to work for him. I find it quite ironic how Brell’s performance actually seems pretty close to the Mr. McMahon character Vince would become a decade later.

Rip turns the offer down, citing wrestling as a noble art that shouldn’t be dumbed down to the masses and he’s too big for money and I’ll give you all a moment to stop laughing hysterically at the idea of Hogan saying all that. Brell sends some thugs out to get at Rip’s limo but Rip bursts through the sunroof like he’s Batman and takes them down. This leads to the fun bit of him holding one terrified goon up and muttering “smells like…doooookieeee…” Brell decides to use a different approach as Samantha Moore (Joan Severance) is sent in to seduce Rip. Now, I’ve always liked Joan and can’t understand why she didn’t go further in Hollywood. She’s talented, funny and has no problem doffing it all to show off that incredibly hot body. However, she pretty much reigned in straight-to-video fare and the occasional TV movie and sadly her role here has to rank as one of the worst. She tries to put the moves on Rip in one of the worst seduction scenes you’d see outside of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and soon falls to his side.

So Brell decides to create a “Battle of the Tough Guys” show, to take place at spots like a bar or a factory, free for alls anyone can take part in. At the first one, a hulking figure named Zeus (Tony Lister) comes in and wages havoc. Charlie reveals that Zeus was a wrestler he once trained who went nuts and killed a guy in the ring. With Zeus, the show becomes a big success and Zeus starts to call out Rip, who refuses. So Zeus puts Randy in the hospital so a revenge-bent Rip goes after him. Right before their big TV match, Brell kidnaps Samantha, demanding Rip take a dive to keep her safe. The two fight all over the studio, with Rip finally shoving Zeus off a scaffold and sending him sailing down fifty feet into the middle of the ring, which collapses around him. Rip goes after a crazed Brell who, while calling him a “jock-ass!”, ends up getting electrocuted.

The movie was hyped to the extreme by WWF on television, with claims it was selling out theaters across the country. In truth, it was barely a blip on the movie-going screens and while not quite a giant flop, wasn’t really successful. But that didn’t keep Vince from bringing in Lister as Zeus to attack Hogan. Now, Lister is actually a good actor, especially when he sends up his own hulking physique and you could tell he did have a good time playing this monster. But his in-ring skills were poor to say the least. At least they teamed him with Randy Savage, leading to a SummerSlam match with Hogan and Brutus Beefcake that was a bit better than expected. It all ended in December, with a special PPV that had the match (on video by this point) followed by the two teams going at it in a steel cage, a PPV show WWF naturally likes to pretend never happened.

A movie that would be even worse a film and even worse effects for the actual wrestling company was Ready to Rumble. The movie has to rank as a huge wasted opportunity for WCW. You think Vince McMahon wouldn’t do anything to have a major Hollywood studio finance a movie that would showcase his promotion? WCW did, with a lot of their big talent involved, playing themselves. However, WCW instead let it slip by portraying the business and their workers as goofs and jokes…which, actually, was how WCW was doing it on their own shows so they were at least consistent.

They say no one ever intentionally sets out to make a bad movie and, in a way, Rumble did have a basically sound plot. David Arquette and Scot Caan play Gordie and Sean, two sewage truck workers who are avid wrestling fans and the epitome of marks. They idolize Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), the champion whose arrogant ways rankle promoter Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano, who has actually been in worse films than this). So when King wrestles Diamond Dallas Page, Sinclair has Page go “off script” and beat up King for real, setting him up for a “four post massacre” which is basically four heels leaping off the top ropes at once. A nice touch is that Tony Schivanoe basically no-sells it on his commentary, just like he normally would.

Gordie and Sean leave the arena, tears in their eyes, and crash their sewage truck with a toilet paper truck smashing right alongside. They think it’s a sign to help out King and search him down at his trailer home, where he’s hiding in drag to escape creditors. This leads to an actually smart thing, when they talk over all the great fights King has won against all odds and King just stares at them in disbelief. “You guys know it’s all a show, right?” “Greatest show on Earth,” Arquette says, seemingly knowingly. That was a fun dynamic, these two such big fans that they can’t buy it’s all faked. Unfortunately, the movie went too far by having Gordie and Sean be pretty much complete idiots, even sticking fingers in their asses as part of a scam to get free stuff. So, basically, they were saying you’d have to be stupid in order to like wrestling, which wasn’t exactly calling to fans to flock to the movie.

Somehow, the two morons convince King to go with them to an arena, popping out of a port-a-potty to pin DDP during an interview. This infuriates Sinclair as he gets the guys to agree to send King against him in a triple-decker cage match, which the guys agree too, not seeming to notice King freaking out as they don’t understand how dangerous a cage really is. King goes to see his ex-wife, Caroline Rhea, for help and she kicks him in the crotch. I remember seeing Oliver Platt on Rhea’s short-lived talk show as they showed the clip and basically asked one another what the hell they were thinking with the movie. There’s also “fun antics” like King going to see a shoot fighter to learn how to fight for real and Rose McGowan as a Nitro girl sent to seduce Gordie, whose father demands he give up this “rasslin” infatuation and become a cop like everyone else in the family.

It all builds up to the big event with King and DDP fighting all over a cage, with the WCW faces locked out. Gordie shows up on a motorcycle to smash through the cage, McGowan gets smacked in the face with a ladder and King gently places DDP on the top of the cage so he’s sent slamming though all three and into the mat. Oh and Sting provides the one truly enjoyable part of the movie by punching out both Gordie and Sean.

So the movie was an utter mess with low-brow humor Tom Green would find insulting, their reviews were horrible and it failed at the box office. But WCW still promoted it with Arquette hanging out on TV a lot and Tony Schivaone, in a moment I know he wishes he could take back, joked that with all the publicity, maybe they should just make Arquette the world champion. Unfortunetly, Tony had underestimated just how crazy Vince Russo could be as Russo actually thought this was a good idea. Everyone…I mean everyone told him it was bad and tired to talk him out of it but couldn’t. Arquette was held by his contract and couldn’t quite refuse, although he argued over it as much as he could, knowing how the fans would react. As we all know, the title change happened and the WCW World Championship, whose lineage went back decades and had been held by Harley Race, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat and Sting, was now around the waist of a third-rate actor. This, in no uncertain terms, was the moment WCW passed the point of no return. To his credit, Arquette did make amends by taking the money he made from WCW and giving it to the families of Owen Hart and Brian Pillman, which raises my estimation of the man several notches.

The last major theatrical release to tackle wrestling was 2000’s Beyond the Mat. Barry Blaustein’s documentary was promoted as “The movie Vince McMahon doesn’t want you to see.” A lot of old-timers were unhappy that the movie shatter kayfabe and talked openly about how it was scripted, yet injuries could happen. Blaustein does do a good job showing the independent ranks and the way guys try to break into the big time, mainly WWF. We get a fun bit of a few independent guys showing their stuff, with Jim Cornette impressed but neither gets called up. There’s also Darren Droz’s first meeting with Vince where Droz tries to vomit on command while McMahon goes announcer voice to call him “Puke.”

Blaustein was a friend of Mick Foley and shows him playing with kids while handling the wild fights he gets into. A harrowing bit is the Rock-Mankind match at the 1999 Royal Rumble where the cameras show Foley’s wife and kids reacting in horror as the Rock smacks him with a chair ten times. He also shows Foley almost incoherent afterward, slurring words. He covers a lot of Terry Funk and what makes him keep going at his age. A nice highlight is a behind the scenes look at ECW with Paul Heyman’s great speech to the troops right before their first PPV, “Barely Legal.” They also talk of Funk announcing his retirement but being back in the ring within a year.

The most controversial aspect of the movie is on Jake Roberts. They put over how awesome Jake was as a worker and better on the mic and contrast it with the aged, overweight man he was in 1999. He talks openly of his dark family and has a brief meeting with his long-estranged daughter, after which he goes to his hotel room to shoot up some drugs. On his 2005 DVD, Roberts claimed that he was told it’d be a documentary on the dangers of drug abuse and had no idea the film would present him the way it did, blaming Terry Funk for serving him up on a platter. The DVD also has guys talking over how the movie was rather dark and didn’t present the business in a fair light. In a way, they’re right; the film does seem to sensationalize the more brutal aspects of wrestling and how easy it is to fall to injury and addiction with no real shot at stardom. On the other hand, it does show the struggles workers go through to get to the top of the business and how rough life on the road is for them. While it may seem a bit dated now with the changes in wrestling since, it is still worth a look.

As you can tell, wrestling films are far more likely to see success as DVD releases as there’s still the mentality in the mainstream that intelligent people can’t like it. It’s a shame as a good, well written drama showing the sport both good and bad can really help sell it to newer fans. But that’s unlikely to happen as “wrestling=fake” is still the reasoning in Hollywood, ironic as that is. WWE is more interested in action/horror stuff to star their guys than anything on the business (which may be a good thing really). Going by the track record of major Hollywood films on wrestling, it’s no wonder the business is often sniffed at. Then again, as the Oscars prove, so many times the most popular films don’t always equal the “best” films so maybe being looked down isn’t that bad a thing after all.

Also around 411mania:

That Was Then looks at Randy Savage.

The Ripple Effect plays positive on HBK in the Wrestlemania main event.

High Road/Low Road debates TNA’s women’s division.

Quick Talkdown mixes wrestling and politics.

The Shimmy continues to chronicle Batista.

Larry C remembers Mike Awesome.

Just Spose does a different take on the WWF forming.

Julian counts down the Top 10 managers.

Piledriver Report examines what makes a champion, a very good column.